The Providence Company or Providence Island Company was an English

chartered company A chartered company is an association with investors or shareholders that is incorporated and granted rights (often exclusive rights) by royal charter (or similar instrument of government) for the purpose of trade, exploration, and/or coloni ...

founded in 1629 by a group of

Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...

s including

Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick (5 June 158719 April 1658), Lord of the Manor of Hunningham,Hunningham, in A History of the County of Warwick: Vol. 6, Knightlow Hundred, ed. L F Salzman (London, 1951), pp. 117–120. was an English colonial ad ...

in order to establish the

Providence Island colony The Providence Island colony was established in 1630 by English Puritans on what is now the Colombian Department of San Andrés and Providencia, about east of the coast of Nicaragua. Although intended to be a model Puritan co ...

on Providence Island and

Mosquito Coast The Mosquito Coast, also known as the Mosquitia or Mosquito Shore, historically included the area along the eastern coast of present-day Nicaragua and Honduras. It formed part of the Western Caribbean Zone. It was named after the local Miskit ...

of what became

Nicaragua Nicaragua (; ), officially the Republic of Nicaragua (), is the largest country in Central America, bordered by Honduras to the north, the Caribbean to the east, Costa Rica to the south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Managua is the countr ...

Background

Providence Island was discovered during 1629 by

Daniel Elfrith Daniel Elfrith ( fl. 1607–1641) was a 17th-century English privateer, colonist and slave trader. In the service of the Earl of Warwick, Elfrith was involved in privateering expeditions against the Spanish from his base in Bermuda. He was par ...

. Elfrith passed its location to Philip Bell who was governor of the Somers Islands; Bell mentioned it to Nathaniel Rich. Rich then involved the Earl of Warwick, his family connection, who called a meeting for 10 November 1629, at Brooke House in

Holborn Holborn ( or ) is a district in central London, which covers the south-eastern part of the London Borough of Camden and a part ( St Andrew Holborn Below the Bars) of the Ward of Farringdon Without in the City of London. The area has its root ...

, London. The result was finance, notionally £200 per member, with 20 members, that number being achieved at the start of 1631. Bell accompanied settlers to Providence Island, landed on 24 December of the same year, and became the first governor. Arthur Percival Newton, ''The Colonising Activities of the English Puritans; the last phase of the Elizabethan struggle with Spain'' (1914), pp. 59–6
archive.org

Participants

Besides Lord Warwick, among the twenty shareholders in the Company were William Fiennes, Lord Saye and Sele, and Robert Greville, Lord Brooke.

Oliver St John Sir Oliver St John (; c. 1598 – 31 December 1673) was an English judge and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1640-53. He supported the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War. Early life St John was the son of Oliver S ...

, a Puritan barrister, represented the Providence Company's interests, and the treasurer was

John Pym John Pym (20 May 1584 – 8 December 1643) was an English politician, who helped establish the foundations of Parliamentary democracy. One of the Five Members whose attempted arrest in January 1642 sparked the First English Civil War, his use ...

, a squire from the West Country. William Jessop was commissioned as the Company's Secretary. The Company was granted a royal charter. Of these investors, 12 already were involved with the

Somers Isles Company The Somers Isles Company (fully, the Company of the City of London for the Plantacion of The Somers Isles or the Company of The Somers Isles) was formed in 1615 to operate the English colony of the Somers Isles, also known as Bermuda, as a commerc ...

. An official record names 7 for the patent granted 4 December 1630, with others to be added in future. The following are listed as Charter Members: Four of them dropped out early, and other investors bought into the Company. A decade later, the

English Civil War The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (" Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of England's governance and issues of re ...

made these names famous.

John Hampden John Hampden (24 June 1643) was an English landowner and politician whose opposition to arbitrary taxes imposed by Charles I made him a national figure. An ally of Parliamentarian leader John Pym, and cousin to Oliver Cromwell, he was one of t ...

was also a prominent figure in the events leading up to the English Civil War. He was not a shareholder personally but was a cousin of one, and he did arbitrate between the shareholders and their agents on the island. A close kinship group linked several charter members of the Company: Lord Warwick's younger brother

Henry Henry may refer to: People *Henry (given name) * Henry (surname) * Henry Lau, Canadian singer and musician who performs under the mononym Henry Royalty * Portuguese royalty ** King-Cardinal Henry, King of Portugal ** Henry, Count of Portugal, ...

, recently made

Earl of Holland Earl of Holland was a title in the Peerage of England. It was created in 1624 for Henry Rich, 1st Baron Kensington. He was the younger son of Robert Rich, 1st Earl of Warwick, and had already been created Baron Kensington in 1623, also in the ...

and a favourite of Queen Henrietta Maria; their half-brother, their mother's natural son, Mountjoy Blount, recently made Earl of Newport and, like Holland, a figure at court; their cousin the

Earl of Essex Earl of Essex is a title in the Peerage of England which was first created in the 12th century by King Stephen of England. The title has been recreated eight times from its original inception, beginning with a new first Earl upon each new cre ...

and his brother-in-law the

Earl of Hertford Earl () is a rank of the nobility in the United Kingdom. The title originates in the Old English word ''eorl'', meaning "a man of noble birth or rank". The word is cognate with the Scandinavian form ''jarl'', and meant "chieftain", particular ...

. The first

opposition party Parliamentary opposition is a form of political opposition to a designated government, particularly in a Westminster-based parliamentary system. This article uses the term ''government'' as it is used in Parliamentary systems, i.e. meaning ''t ...

in English history coalesced around this nucleus and their friends in both

Houses of Parliament The Palace of Westminster serves as the meeting place for both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Informally known as the Houses of Parliament, the Palace lies on the north ban ...

, formed at the end of the 1630s in resistance to the imposition of

Ship Money Ship money was a tax of medieval origin levied intermittently in the Kingdom of England until the middle of the 17th century. Assessed typically on the inhabitants of coastal areas of England, it was one of several taxes that English monarchs co ...

, and meeting ostensibly for Company business in Gray's Inn Lane or Brook House, Holborn, or in the country.

Commercial activity

At the start, the company had a twofold interest: to establish a God-fearing population in an ideal commonwealth (who were to support themselves with growing tobacco and cotton); and to harry Spanish shipping in the

Spanish Main During the Spanish colonization of America, the Spanish Main was the collective term for the parts of the Spanish Empire that were on the mainland of the Americas and had coastlines on the Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico. The term was used to di ...

. The Company's regulations for the three islands of Providence, Henrietta, and Association (Tortuga) forbade card-playing and gaming, whoring, drunkenness, and profanity. "A carefully chosen minister— a German Calvinist refugee from the Palatinate— was brought home in disgrace for singing catches on a Sunday,"

C.V. Wedgwood Dame Cicely Veronica Wedgwood, (20 July 1910 – 9 March 1997) was an English historian who published under the name C. V. Wedgwood. Specializing in the history of 17th-century England and continental Europe, her biographies and narrative hist ...

notes. "The Earl of Warwick and his friends were sincerely trying to create three nests of pirates with the behaviour and morals of a Calvinist theological seminary." The plantation system required African slaves, which involved the Company in the

slave trade Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

, but cotton and tobacco failed to be profitable and were replaced by sugar cane. The islands remained a base for

privateering A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...

, however, under a tacit agreement from the King, whose foreign policy remained officially neutral with regard to Spain, but who agreed, provided that the Company foot any expenses. Prospects for Providence Island brightened at this, sufficiently for the projectors to capitalise the venture with an additional £100,000 in 1637. The Providence Company provided support to the Parliamentarians in the build-up to the

. From 1631 to 1635, the Company also planted an English colony on Tortuga (also called Association Island), off the coast of San Domingo.

Outcome

In 1635 the Spanish raided the settlement on Association Island and destroyed it. In March 1638 several members of the Company were prepared to emigrate to Providence Island: the Earl of Warwick, Lords Saye and Brooke Henry Darley, but nothing came of their petition for leave. In May 1641 the Providence Island Colony was conquered by the Spanish and Portuguese commanded by Adm. Don Francisco Díaz Pimienta.

Political influence

The Company is regarded as an effective if restrained vehicle for political opposition to the

personal rule of Charles I The Personal Rule (also known as the Eleven Years' Tyranny) was the period from 1629 to 1640, when King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland ruled without recourse to Parliament. The King claimed that he was entitled to do this under the Roya ...

References

Sources

*
WorldStatesman - Haiti
*Karen Kupperman, ''Providence Island 1630 - 1641: The Other Puritan Colony,'' Cambridge University Press, 1995. *''The Penguin Dictionary of British and Irish History'', ed. Juliet Gardiner

External links

* {{Chartered companies Chartered companies Defunct companies of the United Kingdom 1629 establishments in England 1650 disestablishments in England New England Puritanism Companies established in 1629 Providencia Island, Colombia